CHAPTER 13
MARA
I’ve never run with my whole heart before.
It’s a stupid thought to have while ducking through a crumbling corridor of a half-abandoned medical deck, but it hits me anyway. I’ve run before, sure. Away from assignments. Away from bad calls and worse lovers. Away from that dark void in the back of my skull that sometimes whispers maybe this is all you’ll ever be.
But this—this is different.
I’m not just running from something now.
I’m runningwithsomeone.
“Tactical bypass up ahead,” I shout behind me, breath catching in my throat. “Left vent shaft—twenty meters!”
Tatek doesn’t question. Just follows. Heavy boots pounding against the metal as I swing low under a collapsed structural brace and slide sideways into the breach. My fingers scrape against the edge of the hatch. Blood smears the panel when I shove it open, but I barely register it.
Pain is background noise now.
The shaft’s narrow, barely a crawlspace. A drip in the ceiling has been leaking some kind of fluid that smells like burnedplastic and regret. I shove through it anyway, wiping my palm against my thigh, and keep crawling.
“You sure this is the right way?” Tatek’s voice is close behind. Clipped. Controlled.
I snort. “Would I have dragged us through melted sewage if I wasn’t sure?”
A beat.
“I like that your definition of sure still includes melted sewage.”
We keep moving.
The shaft dumps out into a side corridor beneath the station’s data vault—a place only system engineers and audit enforcers ever really access. The kind of place where ‘security sweep’ doesn’t mean guards. It means algorithms. Sentries. Infrared. Pressure pads.
Good.
People are easier to lie to than machines.
But I know these systems.
I spent three years designing audit routes before they transferred me to civilian compliance. I know how the logic trees think. I know where they lag. Where the firewalls aren’t actually walls. Where the sensors don’t reach.
And for the first time since the alarms started, I feel like we might actually make it.
I stop at the corridor’s mouth and pull out the chip spike I built back when I still thought I’d be using it to impress a couple of rogue technarchs. Turns out it’s better for survival.
Tatek crouches beside me, eyes scanning everything.
“You’ve done this before,” he murmurs.
I don’t look at him. “Didn’t think I’d be doing it with a warborn looking over my shoulder.”
“Regret it?”
I pause.
Let myself feel the weight of the question.
“No,” I say. “Not for a second.”
